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An Overwhelming Moment!!!

One month three events! Isn’t that amazing? Loving the flavor of Public speaking and Evangelism. Travelling, interactions and the feeling of being able to enlighten someone with the little knowledge I have. This time it was Kanpur that I got a chance of visiting. A student of the Visvesvaraya Technological University, Bangalore had contacted Chandan Baba(a Mozilla Rep) for hosting a Mozilla event in his school(GHA). After a lot of confusion the event came to where it belonged. Shahidji cleared the confusion and I got a chance to be a facilitator.Without missing this opportunity I went ahead knowing the fact there was a only a week’s time in conducting this event. We kept a quick hangout call and then later met with the discussion points. And then the day arrive!

At Kanpur Station

I still remember what a warm welcome it was! It was 28th of July. We reached Kanpur at 8 a.m. Aamir received us at the station and took us to Guru Har Rai Academy where we had to do the maker party. It was around 8:30 by the time we reached school. We met the Principal and the founder of the school. The session was suppose to begin at 10 a.m and we had some time to refresh. We all were hungry since we left at 5:30 a.m in the morning. School staff was so awesome they had arranged breakfast for us. After the breakfast we arranged everything and started the session without any delay. The session started sharp at 9:45 a.m.

We began the session by keeping a 2 mins silence for Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. We started the session on his name. I started with an ice breaking session by asking their name and why are we here? I began the session by telling them about Web Literacy and asking the school staff what changes have they seen in last 25yrs. I spoke about web literacy reason being that Shahidji had taken a wonderful session on web literacy with us at Allahabad. I got inspired and thought to share this with everyone. After web literacy i spoke about FOSS. The session was very interactive and before I spoke about the topic the students where answering what they understand. After talking about Mozilla, Mozilla’s Mission, Products. I took a surprise quiz to check their understanding on the topics. We kept them motivated to be interactive throughout the session by giving them Mozilla swags.

After the following topics we started with the Webmaker and Webmaker tools. Priyank took the stage and started to teach them about Appmaker. Students were quite excited to learn about App making. Priyank called the kids one by one and showed them how to use appmaker and create your own application.

WoMoz OF GHA

Now it was time for Ashish to show them some remixing on the websites using X-Ray Goggles. Ashish started the session by showing them the stats/traffic on the internet. The most interesting part was when the kids were amazed to see their school website getting remixed. Ashish changed the entire look of their school website to Mozilla Uttar Pradesh website. Due to the weak internet connection students couldn’t remix the website but curiously learnt it.

After the demo we kept an activity for an hour for the students to create something of their own from the two tools we spoke about. I was amzed to see kids rushing to the computer lab. Since the school had no WiFi students had got their own dongles. Seeing the enthusiasm among the kids I was truly overwhelmed. It was a speechless moment to see Students busy with the activity.

Our first and foremost agenda was to teach them about web literacy. We kept the session interactive and very open ended. Agenda for the event was:

Web Literacy
FOSS
Introduction to Mozilla
Mozilla Products
Quiz
Intro to Webmaker tools
Hands-on session on X-ray goggles and Appmaker
With the help and introduction on these topics by me, Priyank and Ashish the crowd did make some great projects by the end of the day. The work was collected in one etherpad and was evaluated by Ashish and Priyank.

Some makes by the Students.

We ended the day by having the session with school teachers to have a webmaker club in school so that the zeal of the students doesn’t go in vain.We concluded our sessions by giving away some small tokens of appreciation like bands, badges and stickers etc. to all the students to keep them motivated. The webmaker badge was given only to the Winner and we named them as “Webamaker of GHA.”

We were thanked by the school faculty with a Momento to every Mozillian from Uttar Pradesh.

After the event, yesternight i have got infinite facebook pings from the students demanding more such Mozilla sessions in school soon! It was a great feeling to see their enthusiasm. You feel good about your work only when the you achieve your result, but in this case, the achievement was way more than I had expected.Every moment was an experience which is guaranteed to last for a lifetime.

A few people who are to be thanked for making this event successful and memorable are:

Shahid Ali Farooqui for mentoring us.

Chandan Baba for coordinating.
Galaxy Kadiyala and Bala Subramaniyan for helping us.
Umesh Agarwal for sending us the swags at last minute.
Ashish and Priyank for a brilliant work in teaching the Students about webmaker tools X-Ray Goggles and Appmaker
Ravindra, Abhishek,Rajat and Jyotsna for clicking pictures and managing the crowd.
Ashish, Priyank, Jyotsna, Abhishek and Ravindra for helping me in hosting the session.
Most importantly, Aamir khan without whom we wouldn’t have been able to move a thing.

Special Thanks to the entire staff and students of GHA for such a warm Welcome.